They care more about what rewards they get on their next post
This is a part of the problem, from what I've seen. The people who ARE coming here seem to see it as a 'get rich quick' scheme. What this platform really needs right now isn't necessarily more creators, what it needs is more consumers. If enough people come here and just SEE what is going on, that will drive the attention the platform needs to grow quickly.
Hive seems to have a wonderful ecosystem of its own that sustains itself well, in my opinion to see the kind of growth that everyone seems to want all it really needs is more bodies.
I think those bodies will come if enough people just know it exists. I don't think you actually even need to get influencers on board, if you could just get some product placement in their mouths enough people would come here and stay.
I think we need a mix. There has to be a big enough audience to bring in big creators, but the masses want good content. I think we should aim for those who can't make much from other platforms, e.g. a band with 1000 real fans. If they all come over then they can get something going. When others see this they may try it. Need those pioneers.
I was on the Tsu platform more or less from the start until they lost funding. They had some fairly big names initially, but they did not stick around. I made a bit and others made more, but there was a lot of abuse such as spamming for likes. Hive is harder to kill, but we cannot be complacent. We have to do what we can to build and support the community. We stand to profit in the long run if it does grow.
Why would consumers buy hive? A 1000 . 001 upvotes isn't going to keep quality authors here. And, the consumers would get bored really fast.
I've been on here a year, and haven't run out of content yet, and living in NY state I'm not even able to buy Hive. As I said, there's already an ecosystem here, we don't need an influx of big new upvotes, we just need attention. Hive already has a decent selection of content creators who don't seem to be going anywhere, if we also had an audience, more content creators would come.
I've been here since 2016 and only drop by every once in a while, because the effort isn't worth it and 97% of the content is of no value... So, your point is subjective and since the platform isn't growing, moot.